Color Catastrophe

Hola, thought I would mix it up! So, I've been flipping through some magazines for a while and have come to realize that there aren't very many good or interesting articles out there. And if they do catch my attention I can't blog about them b/c they're about movies or music. :( Too bad I can't blog about that either. haha.

So, anyway I finally stumbled upon an article about art and decided to go with it! It's titled A Room With a Hue (from the March 10, 2008 issue of Newsweek, yes the 10th, they are very precise! It was $4.95 but I got it for free at the library!!! haha) and raises the question (one I haven't really thought about to be honest), why has the color drained out of contemporary art? Hmmmmmm? Now that I think about it, is it true? According to the article, much of the art of the past 50 years has centered around using color to convey a bigger point, rather than having pretty colors to stare at in a museum. The artists of the past actually used color conceptually to make an intellectual point. (But can't art still have an intellectual point behind it, if the artist so wishes it to? YES!) Actually, for the past 30 years beauty hasn't been a prominent factor when it came to the masterpiece of the century. Artists today stand around in their studios and say, "Hey these colors would look pretty together!" (But is there a problem with this? To be honest I'm working on one of these paintings myself in art!) Anyway, artists before had a predetermined system or picked their colors by sheer chance. My question is, isn't picking colors by coincidence almost the same as at random like today? Many suggested Pollock was making his paintings at random with no meaning behind them, but Pollock insisted the effects were intentional.

So, is this good or bad? Were the better paintings produced a century ago or was modernism a movement of much needed change? Without this change in perspective would art still be so popular? Would all of our paintings still be commissioned by a church, only to make points and convey stories/morals like those of the Renaissance? It's hard to say.

Some argue that modern artists focus more on form and leave color out in the cold altogether. I say that anything that can be done in color can be done just as well (or maybe even better) in black and white, with a who cares about pretty colors at all attitude. (I myself have to admit that I love black and white photography!) (Another point, I find it amusing that in a time when there was only black and white TV would they be so obsessed with vibrant colored paintings, maybe that was the reason; they were mad about dull TV shows!) (Just a thought!) Those on the other end of the color spectrum though, they insist that color is the most relative ingredient in art. In order to fully understand the artist's use of color you have to psychically see it. And the mood of the picture depends on the brightness/dullness of the color and the background/setting it's placed in.

I'm torn on this one honestly, I'll continue to ponder but I kinda disagree. I enjoy colors for the sake of colors! I mean I like being (or at least seeming to be) intellectual sometimes, but other times I think it's best to keep things simple. Less can in fact be more sometimes. Art of all things should be the last thing to invoke stress. I say just set back and enjoy, whether it's in color or not.

-Brittany =D

"Painting is just another lowbrow craft of interchangeable, off-the-shelf parts." -Andy Warhol